The complete 2026 guide to the Natural History Museum audio guide
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the Natural History Museum have an audio guide?
Yes. The museum publishes 24 free audio guides on its SoundCloud channel at soundcloud.com/nhmlondon, covering Hintze Hall (narrated by Sir David Attenborough), the gardens, Volcanoes and Earthquakes, Human Evolution, Treasures, and more. There is no handset rental and no official app.
Is the Natural History Museum audio guide free?
Yes. Every piece of first-party audio is free, streamed through SoundCloud or embedded players on nhm.ac.uk. Paid audio guides on Viator, GetYourGuide, Vox City, and similar sites are third-party products and are not produced or endorsed by the museum.
How long is the Attenborough audio guide?
The Hintze Hall tour has 24 tracks, most around 2 minutes, totalling roughly 45 to 55 minutes played straight through.
What is the difference between the audio guide and Our Story with David Attenborough?
The audio guide is a free 24-stop SoundCloud tour of Hintze Hall narrated by Attenborough. Our Story is a separate ticketed 360-degree projection-mapped cinema experience in the Jerwood Gallery, 20 to 25 pounds, 50 minutes, with 24 projectors and 50 speakers. Different rooms, different products.
What languages is the audio guide available in?
English only. The museum publishes no translated audio. Third-party operators advertise multilingual NHM audio guides but they are unaffiliated with the museum.
Do I need to bring headphones?
Yes. The museum does not sell or rent headphones. Any wired or Bluetooth earbuds work. If you forget a pair, Boots South Kensington is a three-minute walk away and sells basic earbuds from around 5 pounds.
The Natural History Museum has free audio content, but calling it an "audio guide" oversells the experience. There is no app, no handset, no QR codes in galleries. The audio lives on SoundCloud, a music streaming platform. You open SoundCloud on your phone, search for the right playlist, and press play. There is no map, no routing, no search, and no way to look up the thing you are standing in front of. The content was mostly recorded in 2018 and covers roughly one room well (Hintze Hall, narrated by David Attenborough). The Dinosaurs gallery, the most visited room in the building, has no audio at all. Everything is English only. The museum sees 7.1 million visitors a year, and the most-played track has 42,000 plays across eight years. That tells you what kind of product this is.
Does the Natural History Museum have an audio guide?
Yes, but barely. The museum hosts scattered audio tracks on a public SoundCloud channel at soundcloud.com/nhmlondon. There is no unified tour, no app, no handset, and no signage in the building directing you to it. As of April 2026 the channel has content for Hintze Hall, Evolution Garden, Nature Discovery Garden, Volcanoes and Earthquakes, Human Evolution, Treasures (Cadogan Gallery), The River installation, Fixing Our Broken Planet, From the Beginning, Earth's Treasury, and Wildlife Photographer of the Year. Notably absent: the Dinosaurs gallery. Also notably absent: any language other than English.
The museum's own accessibility page states the policy plainly: "All our audio content is available for free, and you can listen to it on your personal devices either here at the Museum or at home."
A few things the museum does not offer, which visitors often assume it does:
There is no handset rental counter. No lanyard audio device. No audio wand.
There is no official NHM visitor app. The iTunes Lookup API returns zero results for the old id once tied to "Natural History Museum London." Every "Natural History Museum" app in the App Store and Play Store is a third-party product, most from Trishti Systems Ltd. The highest-rated one has 2.4 stars on Android. The iOS version has 1.0 stars.
There is no multilingual audio. The museum publishes in English only.
The museum does not sell or rent headphones. You bring your own.
Yes. Every piece of first-party audio the museum publishes is free. You stream it on SoundCloud or play it directly from an embedded player on the gallery pages at nhm.ac.uk. No login. No email capture. No freemium tier. Transcripts are free too, published as plain HTML pages alongside each guide.
The confusion comes from third-party resellers. Search "Natural History Museum audio guide" and you will hit Viator, GetYourGuide, Vox City, WeGoTrip, Headout, MyWoWo, Civitatis, Pelago, and at least five others selling "audio tours" priced from £3.70 to £11. These bundle a reserved-entry ticket (which is itself free from the museum) with their own app-based narration. Some use AI text-to-speech voiceover. Reviews are mixed: WeGoTrip averages 4.3 stars across 379 reviews, but Vox City's audio-only product sits at 3.0 stars and LondonBillets has multiple "scam" and "ticket rejected" complaints from 2026. None of these products are produced, endorsed, or hosted by the museum.
The honest summary: if you are paying anything for an "NHM audio guide," you are paying a third party for content the museum publishes for free, in a different format, possibly generated by a text-to-speech model. See nhm vs viator audio tours for a full breakdown.
What does the Attenborough audio guide actually cover?
The free Attenborough-narrated tour runs through Hintze Hall, the central nave of the museum where the blue whale skeleton hangs overhead. It has 24 tracks: a Welcome plus 23 stops. Each stop is short, between 1:17 and 2:25, and follows the same pattern: scripted narration from Attenborough, then a 60 to 90 second interview with a named NHM scientist or external expert.
The full stop list:
Welcome
Blue whale (curator Richard Sabin)
Giraffes (Dr Natalie Cooper)
Blue marlin (Oliver Crimmen)
Turbinaria coral (Miranda Lowe)
Seaweeds (Prof Juliet Brodie)
Insects (Dr Gavin Broad)
American Mastodon (Prof Adrian Lister)
Mantellisaurus (Prof Paul Barrett)
Fossil trees (Dr Paul Kenrick)
Banded iron formation (Prof Richard Herrington)
Imilac meteorite (Dr Caroline Smith)
Explorers case introduction (Dr Adrian Glover)
Explorers case detail, Captain Scott (Prof Sara Russell)
Collectors case introduction (Dr Tim Littlewood)
Collectors case detail, Sir Hans Sloane (Dr Victoria Pickering)
Founders case introduction (Sir Michael Dixon)
Founders case detail, Richard Owen (Prof Gowan Dawson)
Preparators case introduction (Hein van Grouw)
Preparators case detail, Dorothea Bate (Karolyn Shindler)
Thinkers case introduction (Prof Ian Owens)
Thinkers case detail, Toxodon and Darwin (Prof Ian Barnes)
Ceiling (Dr Sandy Knapp)
Architecture (Prof John Holmes)
Played straight through, the tour runs around 45 to 55 minutes. Playlist URL: soundcloud.com/nhmlondon/sets/hintze-hall. Full transcript is on the NHM site.
One thing to know going in: the playlist was created on 10 May 2018 and has not been materially refreshed since. In stop 17, Sir Michael Dixon is introduced as "today's Director." He left that role in 2021. Doug Gurr has been Director since January 2022. If you notice the dated reference, that is why.
SoundCloud play counts tell their own story. The Welcome track has 42,430 plays across eight years. By stop 5 (Turbinaria Coral) the count falls to 7,793. After eight years in market, the most-played track in this tour has been heard by roughly 0.6% of the museum's annual visitors. Most people either never find it or drop off within the first few stops. See attenborough nhm audio guide for a track-by-track listen guide.
Is "Our Story with David Attenborough" the same as the audio guide?
No, and this confusion has cost people £25 and an afternoon. Our Story with David Attenborough is a ticketed 360-degree projection-mapped cinema experience in the Jerwood Gallery, Blue Zone. Walls and floor light up around you. There are 24 projectors and 50 speakers. The runtime is 50 minutes, with a 45-minute narrative core. Capacity is 95 per show.
Prices, as of April 2026:
Off-peak (Monday to Friday, excluding school holidays): Adult £20, child £10
Standard (afternoon weekend and holiday slots): Adult £22.50, child £11.25
Peak (morning weekend and holiday slots): Adult £25, child £12.50
Members and Patrons always 50% off. Disabled companion tickets free.
It opened 19 June 2025, was originally scheduled to close 18 January 2026, and was extended on 12 November 2025 to run through 30 August 2026. At the extension announcement, NHM said 80,000+ visitors had seen it in the first five months. The soundtrack by Nick Powell (Tony- and Olivier-nominated) was released on streaming platforms the same day. A companion book by Colin Butfield and Jonnie Hughes (Open Planet Studios, formerly Studio Silverback) came out through John Murray Press in November and December 2025. Programming sponsor: Jerwood Foundation.
The experience is narrated throughout by Attenborough, subtitled in English, and is not an audio guide. You sit, stand, or wander inside a single dark room while images and sound move around you. No re-entry once it ends. See our story attenborough vs audio guide for the full breakdown of what to expect.
Quick decision rule: if you want to hear Attenborough's voice for free while walking around the main hall, use the Hintze Hall SoundCloud tour. If you want the cinematic 50-minute sit-down experience, buy Our Story tickets in advance.
What other galleries have official audio?
Beyond Hintze Hall, the museum has quietly built up a library of gallery-level audio guides, most of them in the last two years. Full list with approximate durations:
Evolution Garden (outdoors, Urban Nature Project): 39 tracks, roughly 60 minutes played straight through. Opened August 2024. Designed with VocalEyes and five blind and partially blind young adults (aged 16 to 20) who worked with spoken-word poet Testament to create 13 poetic interludes embedded in the guide.
Nature Discovery Garden (outdoors): 33 tracks, roughly 60 minutes. Same production team as Evolution Garden.
Volcanoes and Earthquakes gallery (Red Zone): 16 tracks, 40 minutes, audio-descriptive format. Uploaded 13 January 2026.
Human Evolution gallery (Red Zone): single embedded SoundCloud file on the gallery page. Duration not publicly stated. NHM warns "some changes have been made to the gallery that aren't reflected in this guide."
Treasures (Cadogan Gallery, Blue Zone): audio-descriptive guide to the 22 objects in the gallery, narrated in English.
Dinosaurs gallery (Blue Zone): short SoundCloud guide.
Fixing Our Broken Planet (Blue Zone, opened April 2025): single-file audio guide.
The River (installation, opened June 2024): 2 tracks.
Wildlife Photographer of the Year: fresh audio guides commissioned each year for the temporary exhibition.
How do I download the NHM audio guide before my visit?
The single most useful thing you can do before visiting: open soundcloud.com/nhmlondon on your phone, find the guides you want, and pre-save or pre-download them. The museum's Wi-Fi is free but open, unencrypted, and sits behind a captive portal login at nhm.ac.uk/galleries/wifi/login.html. Streaming mid-tour works most of the time but is not reliable, especially on lower-ground floors and in the Earth Hall escalator-through-the-globe section.
Options, in order of reliability:
SoundCloud app, offline: free account required for offline downloads. SoundCloud Go (paid) lets you save tracks for listening without a connection. If you have a free account, queue the playlists while on home Wi-Fi and play them back in the app.
SoundCloud in a browser: works fine for streaming on mobile data or museum Wi-Fi. No login required.
nhm.ac.uk gallery pages: each gallery with audio embeds the SoundCloud player directly. Works in a mobile browser without leaving the museum's site.
Transcripts: every guide has a plain HTML transcript on nhm.ac.uk. If audio is a problem, read along.
Yes, always. The museum does not provide, sell, or rent headphones. Playing audio aloud is not explicitly banned in any stated policy we found, but it is universally frowned upon in galleries.
Bring whatever you already own. Wired earbuds work. Bluetooth earbuds work. AirPods work. For older phones without a 3.5mm jack, bring a Lightning or USB-C adapter. For families wanting to listen together, a 3.5mm splitter (around £3 to £8 at any electronics shop) lets two people share one phone, or each person uses their own device.
If you forget headphones, Boots South Kensington is about a three-minute walk from the Cromwell Road entrance and stocks basic earbuds from around £5. WHSmith at South Kensington tube has a small selection. Tesco Express and Ryman on Gloucester Road stock cheap wired pairs too. There is no known vending machine inside the museum or at the tube station. See do i need headphones nhm for the practical detail.
What languages is the NHM audio guide available in?
English only, from the museum. Every SoundCloud track. Every transcript. Every on-site embedded player. The Our Story immersive is narrated in English with English subtitles. There is no official French, German, Spanish, Italian, Mandarin, Arabic, Japanese, or Korean audio.
This is a source of consistent SERP confusion. Search "Natural History Museum audio guide Spanish" or "French" and you will find Viator, Vox City, Pelago, WeGoTrip, and MyWoWo selling "multilingual audio guides." These are third-party products. Quality varies. Reviewers regularly report emails that never deliver the guide, or apps that fail to launch at the gate. See nhm audio guide languages and nhm audio guide multilingual for what international visitors actually have.
One unverified older claim worth flagging: some secondary sources reference multilingual button-triggered audio in the Earth Hall's Volcanoes and Earthquakes area. This is not corroborated by any current nhm.ac.uk page, and the January 2026 audio-descriptive guide for that gallery is English only. If you find it in the gallery, it is a bonus, not something to plan around.
How long should I budget for the audio guide?
A rough planner, assuming you stop to actually look at what the narrator is describing:
Hintze Hall (Attenborough): 45 to 55 minutes of audio, plus walking and looking. Budget 60 to 75 minutes.
Evolution Garden + Nature Discovery Garden: around 60 minutes each, outdoors. If weather cooperates, budget 2 to 2.5 hours for both gardens together including tea break.
Volcanoes and Earthquakes: 40 minutes of audio.
Treasures: 20 to 30 minutes, walking the 22 objects in the Cadogan Gallery.
Our Story (ticketed): 50 minutes fixed, plus arrival buffer.
A full first visit with dinosaurs, Hintze Hall, one garden, and lunch runs three to four hours comfortably. Weekend mornings peak around 11am to 1pm. Late afternoons after 3pm are noticeably quieter. See how long does nhm take for time budgets by visitor type.
Is the audio guide good for kids?
Mixed verdict. The Hintze Hall tour was not written for children. Tracks are short enough that a patient 8-year-old will make it through, but the tone is scripted-documentary-and-curator-interview, not performative storytelling. The content leans heavy on taxonomy and museum history. Younger kids lose interest.
Better options for families:
Explorer Backpacks (free, under-7s, Central Hall info desk, photo ID required) include a trail and activity kit.
Dinosaurs gallery short audio is more approachable than Hintze Hall.
Dawnosaurs (ages 5 to 15, 8am to 10am before public opening, free) is a relaxed-opening morning for neurodivergent and disabled children.
Dino Snores sleepovers: around £80 to £85 for kids aged 7 to 11; £220 to £295 for grown-ups.
Yes, deliberately so. NHM's audio programme has been built accessibility-first. The newer guides (gardens 2024, Volcanoes and Earthquakes 2026) are labelled "audio descriptive" and were produced with VocalEyes, a charity specialising in audio description for blind and visually impaired audiences. The gardens guides include described-navigation tracks that help blind visitors move through the outdoor space.
Other accessibility provisions:
Large print guides for temporary exhibitions
Visual guides (PDF) for Wildlife Photographer of the Year, Our Story, Dawnosaurs
Tactile and Braille books at some gallery entrances
Hearing loops at information desks
BSL Behind-the-Scenes Tour of the Spirit Collection (£25, led by John Wilson, no voiceover, meeting point Turbinaria coral bay)
Monthly relaxed viewings of Our Story (first Wednesday and first Saturday)
Honest answer: the free guides are worth the price (free) if you know where to find them. They are not a polished, curated end-to-end experience. They are a patchwork of gallery-specific SoundCloud playlists with inconsistent update histories. Hintze Hall is the best produced, but it is eight years old and it shows. The Urban Nature Gardens audio, made with VocalEyes and Testament, is the most thoughtful recent work. Volcanoes and Earthquakes is functional and informative.
The paid third-party audio guides are mostly a worse deal than the museum's own free audio. Some use AI voices. Some have delivery problems. A handful (WeGoTrip at the lowest price point, Vox City's live-guide hybrid) are decent for specific use cases, but none of them beat walking in with a phone that already has the SoundCloud app loaded.
Our Story is a different category. It is not an audio guide, it is a cinema experience, and the £20 to £25 question is whether a 50-minute Attenborough-narrated projection-mapped show is worth the price. Press reception has been strong. See is nhm audio tour worth it for the verdict.
How does it compare to other London museum audio guides?
Briefly: the Science Museum, next door on Exhibition Road, does not have a comparable narrated gallery tour system. The British Museum offers a £7 multimedia guide handset. The V&A has no dedicated audio guide but hosts podcasts. The Tate offers audio-described tours on request. The NHM's model (free, English-only, SoundCloud-hosted, accessibility-first) is unusual among major London institutions. See nhm vs science museum audio guide and best nhm audio guide for the comparison.
Summary: which audio should I actually use?
If you have 90 minutes and want to hear Attenborough, use the free Hintze Hall SoundCloud tour. If you have a full afternoon, add one garden guide. If you care about the science rather than the building, use the Volcanoes and Earthquakes or Human Evolution gallery audio. If you want a big immersive moment and can book ahead, buy Our Story tickets. Skip the paid third-party apps unless you specifically need a non-English language, in which case pick one carefully and check recent reviews.
Download everything before you arrive. Bring headphones. Budget time for the gardens outdoors if the weather is decent.
About Musa
Musa is one alternative to the museum's SoundCloud patchwork: AI-powered museum tour guides that work with your questions rather than playing a fixed script. We built it because we think the gap between "here is a 2-minute clip of a curator" and "actually having a conversation about what you are looking at" is wider than it should be. If you visit NHM and try the free audio first, that is probably the right call. If you want something more interactive next time, we are here.
FAQ
Does the Natural History Museum have an audio guide?
Yes. The museum publishes 24 free audio guides on its SoundCloud channel at soundcloud.com/nhmlondon, covering Hintze Hall (narrated by Sir David Attenborough), the gardens, Volcanoes and Earthquakes, Human Evolution, Treasures, and more. There is no handset rental and no official app.
Is the Natural History Museum audio guide free?
Yes. Every piece of first-party audio is free, streamed through SoundCloud or embedded players on nhm.ac.uk. Paid "audio guides" on Viator, GetYourGuide, Vox City, and similar sites are third-party products and are not produced or endorsed by the museum.
How long is the Attenborough audio guide?
The Hintze Hall tour has 24 tracks, most around 2 minutes, totalling roughly 45 to 55 minutes played straight through.
What is the difference between the audio guide and Our Story with David Attenborough?
The audio guide is a free 24-stop SoundCloud tour of Hintze Hall narrated by Attenborough. Our Story is a separate ticketed 360-degree projection-mapped cinema experience in the Jerwood Gallery, £20 to £25, 50 minutes, with 24 projectors and 50 speakers. Different rooms, different products.
What languages is the audio guide available in?
English only. The museum publishes no translated audio. Third-party operators advertise multilingual "NHM audio guides" but they are unaffiliated with the museum.
Do I need to bring headphones?
Yes. The museum does not sell or rent headphones. Any wired or Bluetooth earbuds work. If you forget a pair, Boots South Kensington is a three-minute walk away and sells basic earbuds from around £5.
